A Room of One’s Own in The Virginia Woolf Reading Group

Aug 15, 2011 Misha rated it really liked it

Shelves: british, classics, favourites, purchased-2012, non-fiction

This is only the second Virginia Woolf book I have read (shocking, right?). Like the first one (Mrs. Dalloway), I find it a bit difficult to express how I feel about this book.

Though this has been described as a feminist classic, I think this can be read (in fact must be read) by anyone interested in women writers in history. The author offers some excellent insights on the role of women and the reasons they weren't active in the literary world. She never claims that one sex is better than the o ...more

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Dec 22, 2012 Jimmy rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: year-1920s, female, united-kingdom, and-a-half-stars, non-fiction

Interesting thoughts on women and fiction, written as a hybrid between story and essay. One wonders if Woolf stumbled on this fictive-voice through a need to re-invent the essay form to fit a more feminine, less authoritative perspective? If so,

it would mirror many of the themes she discusses in the book itself. And also seems to be a precursor to the kind of rambling consciousness of a Thomas Bernhard, which I could not help but be reminded of when reading humorous passages such as this:

Anythin

Interesting thoughts on women and fiction, written as a hybrid between story and essay. One wonders if Woolf stumbled on this fictive-voice through a need to re-invent the essay form to fit a more feminine, less authoritative perspective? If so,

it would mirror many of the themes she discusses in the book itself. And also seems to be a precursor to the kind of rambling consciousness of a Thomas Bernhard, which I could not help but be reminded of when reading humorous passages such as this:

Anything may happen when womanhood has ceased to be a protected occupation, I thought, opening the door. But what bearing has all this upon the subject of my paper, Women and Fiction? I asked, going indoors.

She makes a lot of well reasoned points here, not only about women but about men, society, writing, and art in general. I will not try to summarize her points since it is such a short book, so just read it yourself. I did want to share this one quote though:

It is much more important to be oneself than anything else. Do not dream of influencing other people ... Think of things in themselves. p115

One of the impressions I had of Virginia Woolf and her narrator Clarissa Dalloway when I finished Mrs. Dalloway a few weeks ago was that they were both fiercely themselves, and just as they would not want to be converted ("conversion" was a big word in Dalloway) by the Sally Setons and Peter Walshes of the world, they would not want to see the Peters and Sallys changed or converted either. That is what made Mrs. Dalloway, the book, so unique to me:

it celebrated each and every voice for what it was, presenting varied points of view without setting up a hierarchy. Yet

when Woolf looks back at the history of women and fiction, she sees that women have been defined and confined by men. Not been allowed to be themselves, not given a voice. I also share this deep sentiment with Woolf. As master gardener Ruth Stout once said: